By Nury Vittachi

Monday, 21 January 2013

An app to help husbands cheat

Only available in Japan for now

THE CHEATING HUSBAND app is coming. But for now, you can only get phones with that function in secondhand stores in Japan. I heard this from a gentleman whom I shall call Phil Anderer (not his real name) who is on his third wife but still has mistresses, due to a tragic medical condition (over-sized testosterone gland, shriveled conscience).

“There are 200,000 apps in the world but NOT ONE can do what a 2002 Fujitsu flip-phone can do,” he enthused. Cheaters (who prefer to refer to themselves as “players”) do NOT need a high level of security. They need a high level of sneakiness. So he sneers at Smartphone apps which offer password-protected files for secrets. That’s stupid, Phil says. “It’s like a 1000-watt beacon saying: There are things I’m not telling you.”

In contrast, when a Fujitsu flip-phone owner gets a call, text or email from anyone on his list of mistresses, no record appears on the recent calls list, nor on the missed calls list, nor in the contacts list. His wife can spend as much time as she likes scrolling through his phone. She finds nothing.

That’s because the indicators are very subtle, such as a small change in the shape of the battery or antenna icon.

App developers are expected to copy the sneaky Fujitsu system for modern smart-phones this year. (In theory, of course, it can help women cheat too, although they are probably too smart to need this sort of help.)

But it may be too late for Phil, who is aging fast (now over 60) and is rapidly losing the ability to remember passwords, written or visual. He was looking a bit crushed the last time I saw him.

He said: “These says, when I give my 1,000 megawatt smile to young women, they assume I must be one of their fathers’ friends.”

2. The tunes you used to “rock out” to are now playing in elevators. (Paul Fox)

3. There is less hair on your head than on any other parts of your body. (Farah Huq)

4. It’s Saturday night, you have no-one to see and nowhere to go, and you think: Yippee!

5. “Putting on your best clothes” no longer means choosing between four different pairs of jeans.

6. The end of the movie is no longer when the fun begins, it’s when the date ends. (Joanna Chung)

7. Pregnancy tests no longer pop up as regular scary incidents in your life.

8. You think of chess as a physical sport you will play if the pieces are not too heavy.

9. By the time you’ve finished dialing a long-distance phone number, you are too worn out to talk to the person.

10. When you were young, you could get really high on a playground swing with nobody pushing. Now it’s hard work to get the rocking chair moving.

11. These days you are more likely to wake at 4 am than go to sleep at that time. (Sunita Chau)

12. Your fridge contains items which are not beer. (Yes, this will even happen to 22-year-old Western males.)

13. Taking a nap changes from something you are forced to do, to something you look forward to. (Paul Fox)

14. You eat vegetables willingly.

15. You are thinking about getting an automatic scrolling ebook so that you don’t have to make the effort to turn pages.

16. Every time you forget something you blame it on old age. (Farah Huq)

17. The words “summer holiday” no longer makes you think of an endless vacation, but a snatched break in Thailand.

18. Every time you see an old picture of yourself you think: I used to be soooo thin!

19. You say the same thing about modern music that your parents said about your music. “Where’s the melody?”

20. You can’t remember the last time you slept in a single bed.

21. You use your computer for work, rather than for pretending to work.

22. You eat all sorts of bitter, sour foods like durian, camembert and bitter gourd that you used to think were disgusting.

***

ACTRESS Jodie Foster got onto a stage in front of the world’s television cameras last week and made a speech in front of 20 million people about how much she valued privacy. Oookaaay.

***

A BUNGLING drug-smuggler triggered suspicions when he fixed himself a NINE-MINUTE sightseeing holiday. He flew into a Massachusetts airport ready to hand over a tiny package and immediately board a plane heading back, according to a link forwarded reader Rajiv Das.

No city in the world is so ugly that it deserves only a nine-minute visit.

Except for Xian.

And Ulaanbaatar.

And Detroit.

And Seoul.

And Warsaw.

And Luanda.

And Moscow.

And Naypyidaw.

And Riyadh.

And Maputo.

I’ll finish the list when I have a couple of days to spare.

Xian

Cairo

Athens

***

A DOCTOR in Germany is being sued after leaving 16 items in a patient after surgery. I think the doctor probably realized he’d screwed up afterwards, when he couldn’t find his lunchbox.

“Where’s my sausage sandwich? In my lunchbox. Where’s my lunchbox? Hmm, I had it before cutting that guy open this morning…”

***

THIS MADE ME laugh. The Bad Lip Reading team turned the sound off these football clips and then dubbed in what it looks like they are saying.

It’s amusing but it’s not quite as funny as this one, from the BBC wildlife team—they did the same thing, but with animals—this had me roaring with laughter at my desk.

*** WHAT SORT of week do you have ahead? I’m going to be giving a talk at Cyberport in Hong Kong on Wednesday, and then I’m off to China on Thursday to give a talk Friday morning. Back in Hong Kong to speak at a function at the Asia Society Friday night. Drop me a line if you in the vicinity.

***

NOW IF you’ll excuse me, I have to go and have a coffee with my buddy Lance.

“It’s just coffee, okay? Plain old coffee. If I SAY it’s coffee, I MEAN it’s cortisone, I mean coffee, is that clear?”

***

SHAME on Oprah for putting this psychotic man on a global platform for so many hours.